Part 10

For, as the deepest and most earnest thinkers of our day are painfully aware, the Gospel of Christendom, as it stands in the Four Evangels, does NOT suffice, uninterpreted, to satisfy the needs of the age, and to furnish a perfect system of thought and rule of life. Christianity—historically preached and understood—has for eighteen centuries filled the world with wars, persecutions, and miseries of all kinds; and in these days it is rapidly filling it with agnosticism, atheism, and revolt against the very idea of God. The Perfect Way seeks to consolidate truth in one complete whole, and, by systematising religion, to demonstrate its Catholicity. It seeks to make peace between Science and Faith; to marry the Intellect with the Intuition; to bring together East and West, and to unite Buddhist philosophy with Christian love, by demonstrating that the basis of religion is not historical, but spiritual—not physical, but psychic—not local and temporal, but universal and eternal. It avers that the true “Lord Jesus Christ” is no mere historical character, no mere demi-god, by whose material blood the souls of men are washed white, but “the hidden man of the heart,” continually born, crucified, ascending and glorified in the interior Kingdom of the Christian’s own Spirit. A scientific age rightly refuses to be any longer put off with data which are more than dubious, and logic which morality and philosophy alike reject. A deeper, truer, more real religion is needed for an epoch of thought, and for a world familiar with Biblical criticism and revision—a religion whose foundations no destructive agnosticism can undermine, and in whose structure no examination, however searching, shall be able to find flaw or blemish. It is only by rescuing the Gospel of Christ from the externals of history, persons, and events, and by vindicating its essential significance, that Christianity can be saved from the destruction which inevitably overtakes all idolatrous creeds. There is not a word in The Perfect Way at variance with the spirit of the Gospel of the “Lord Jesus Christ.”

Nothing shows the method adopted in their Gospel of Interpretation by the two authors more clearly than their teaching with regard to the story of the Garden of Eden and the Fall of Man. It is curious how literally this story has been taken through many ages of the Church’s history, in view of the fact that such a writer as Origen in the early days of the infant Church observed that: “No one in his time would be so foolish as to take this allegory as a description of actual fact.” Kingsford and Maitland refer the interpretation firstly to the Church, and secondly to individual man. “The conscience,” they say, “set over the human reason as its guide, overseer, and ruler, whether, in the general, as the Church, or in the particular, as the individual, falls, when, listening to the suggestions of the lower nature, she desires, seeks, and at length defiles herself with, the ambitions and falsehoods of this present world.” “Ceasing to be a trustworthy guide she becomes herself serpent and seducer to the human reason, leading him into false paths until, if she have her way, she will end by plunging him into the lowest depths of abject ignorance, there to be devoured by the brood of unreason and to be annihilated for ever. For she is now no longer the true wife, Faith, she has become the wanton, Superstition.” On the other hand, “the Church at her best, unfallen, is the glass to the lamp of Truth, guarding the sacred flame within and transmitting unimpaired to her children the light received upon its inner surface.” Hitherto this fall has been the common fate of all Churches. “Thus fallen and degraded, the Church becomes a church of this world, greedy of worldly dignities, emoluments, and dominion, intent on foisting on the belief of her votaries in the name of authority fables and worse than fables—a Church jealous of the letter which killeth, ignorant of, or bitterly at enmity with, the spirit which giveth life.”

We now come to the interpretation of the Fall as applied to individual Man. This is allegorically described as “the lapse of heavenly beings from their first happy estate and their final redemption by means of penance done through incarnation in the flesh.” The authors tell us that this imagined lapse is a parable designed to veil and preserve a truth. This truth is the Creative Secret, the projection of Spirit into matter, the descent of substance into Maya, or illusion. From a cosmic standpoint “the Tree of Divination or Knowledge becomes Motion or the Kalpa—the period of Existence as distinguished from Being; the Tree of Life is Rest or the Sabbath, the Nirvâna. Adam is Manifestation; the Serpent—no longer of the lower, but of the higher sphere—is the celestial Serpent or Seraph of Heavenly Counsel.” By the Tree of Divination of Good and Evil in this interpretation must be understood that condition by means of which Spirit projected into appearance becomes manifested under the veil of Maya, a necessary condition for the evolution of the individual, but carrying with it its own inevitable perils. It is not, say our authors, because matter is in itself evil that the soul’s descent into it constitutes a fall. It is because to the soul matter is a forbidden thing. By quitting her own proper condition and descending into matter she takes upon herself matter’s limitations. It is no particular act that constitutes sin. Sin does not consist in fulfilling any of the functions of nature. Sin consists in acting without or against the Spirit, and in not seeking the divine sanction for everything that is done. Sin, in fact, is of the soul, and it is due to the soul’s inclination to the things of sense. To regard an act as per se sinful is materialism and idolatry. For in doing so we invest that which is physical with a spiritual attribute, and this is of the essence of idolatry.

Adam signifies the manifested personality, or man, and is only complete when Eve, his soul, is added to him as helpmeet. When Eve takes of the fruit and enjoys it, she turns away from her higher spiritual self to seek for pleasure in the things of her lower self, and in doing so she draws Adam down with her till they both become sensual and debased. The sin which commences in the thought of the soul, Eve, thus becomes subsequently developed into action through the energy of the body or masculine part, Adam. One of the inevitable results of the soul’s enslavement to matter is its liability to extinction. In eating of the fruit Adam and Eve absorb the seeds of mortality. As Milton says:

They engorged without restraint, And knew not, eating Death.

The soul in her own nature is immortal, but the lower she sinks into matter the weaker becomes her vitality. A continuous downward course must therefore end in the extinction of the individual—not of course of the Divine Ray, which returns to the Source whence it came. It is well to bear in mind that man is a dual being, not masculine or feminine only, but both. This, of course, applies equally to man whether manifested in a male or female body. One side is more predominant in man and the other in woman, but this does not imply absence of the other side, but merely its subordination. The man who has nothing, or next to nothing, of the woman in him, is no true man, and the woman who has nothing of the man in her, is no true woman. Man, whether man or woman, consists of male and female, Reason and Intuition, and is therefore essentially twofold. Owing to the duality of his constitution, every doctrine relating to man has a dual significance and application. Thus the sacred books not only present an historical narrative of events occurring in time, but have a spiritual significance of a permanent character in regard to which the element of time has no meaning. In this sense Scripture is a record of that which is always taking place.

Thus, the Spirit of God, which is original Life, is always moving upon the face of the waters, or heavenly deep, which is original Substance. And the One, which consists of these two, is always putting forth alike the Macrocosm of the universe and the Microcosm of the individual, and is always making man in the image of God, and placing him in a garden of innocence and perfection, the garden of his own unsophisticated nature. And man is always falling away from that image and quitting that garden for the wilderness of sin, being tempted by the serpent of sense, his own lower element. And from this condition and its consequences he is always being born of a pure virgin—dying, rising and ascending into heaven.

This, in brief, is one of the most essential portions of the new Gospel of Interpretation. It exemplifies the method adopted throughout which is that to which we are accustomed to apply the word “Hermetic.” It is both Christian and pre-Christian, for it is the interpretation of the meaning of life, which was the Key to the ancient Gnostic faiths which, subsisting before Christianity, became incorporated in the Christian teaching. New generations and races of men require the old truths to be put before them in a new guise. This was so when Christianity first came to birth, but in the days of Jesus Christ there were many things which the Prophet of Nazareth had to say to his disciples, but which, as he told them, they were then too weak to understand. The mystical interpretation of Christian truth fell on deaf ears then. Re-stated and re-interpreted, after a lapse of 1900 years, is it too much to hope that it may no longer prove “to the Gentiles foolishness, and to the Jews a rock of offence”?

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● Transcriber’s Notes: ○ Text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores (italics). ○ Footnotes have been moved to follow the chapters in which they are referenced.